I use two second object tags. The result on iPhone will be a little different than on desktop browsers. Unless you explicitly set a poster frame, it will use a black one. It will also put it’s own play button on top of the poster frame. (if anyone knows how to disable either of those, I would love to know how) By doing this, you can do the whole thing without any Javascript at all. If you want to see an example, here one is: . The relevent part of the source is lines 94-100. I don’t know if you can use an embed tag and make it work. Now that I think of it, I think this may be how the Apple Javascript does it.